If you ask a hundred people a question you’ll no doubt get a hundred different answers. If you ask the same hundred “Who would you call, if you had a computer or network problem?” You’ll get a hundred different answers that are a variation of only Three possible answers.
Depending on who you are, the size of company you work for, you’re answers will fall into one of three categories:
- Someone within your company who is not an IT professional, but know enough to help
- An independent IT consultant / IT outsourcing company
- Corporate Helpdesk / Internal IT
- Typically does not cost any additional money
- Always around when you need (Except sick days and vacations and weekends)
- Usually a trusted member of staff
- No formal technology training
- Little of no industry experience
- No support group to fall back on
- Loss of productivity in primary job function
- Indirect loss of productivity for all other staff members due to downtime
-
There are pro’s and con’s in each case. The problem is how do you determine what the best for your company. Lets review each option
PC Jockey – Accidental GoTo Guy or Gal
This is typically the person in your work place that knows more than most in your company. This is also the person that was hired for a completely different task than supporting your companies IT infrastructure.
Pro’s :
Con’s:
Typically this individual did not ask to become the go to guy out of choice, but out of necessity after resolving a minor computer problem or printing issue in the past.
Historically speaking every small business has one. It could be you, or the CFO, or the Filipino guy in the warehouse. Who ever it is, however they got there. They are now the company’s “go to technology expert”.
This starts of as a great cost saving practice for most small businesses, but it does not take long to escalate into a disaster of epic proportions, followed by expensive IT service calls from an independent IT consultant to fix the problem.
Example :
Tom, the CFO determines that the company can not afford, and more importantly does not have enough computer problems, or network support issues to outsource their company’s IT to an IT outsourcing company. Tom further decides to take on the task of supporting his computer users, internal computers and network on his own. This is in addition to being financially responsible for the company. Tom is proud of the fact he is saving his company a little fortune.
In reality Tom is being penny wise pound foolish, because he is not focusing on his job, and not driving his company in the right direction. When things do finally get out of control, he is over his head and going to end up spending more than he budgeted for.
Hourly IT Consultant
Here enter the Hourly IT Consultant/s. Similar to most blue collar workers such as your local plumber, electrician or landscaper, and anybody else who keeps you waiting for hours, such as white collar workers like your doctor, lawyer and accountant. This class of consultant ultimately gives you lots of hope, with a dash of a prayer all on top of a wing and leaves you with a big bill and no idea if your problem has truly been resolved.
Hourly IT consultants focus on fulfilling what you ask for, and not what is right for you and your business. Which at the time might be anything from “Can’t print to the network printer, come fix it” to “My system is slow and giving me error messages.” People tend to call for hourly IT help because technicians are readily available, and offer quick and easy solutions to just the issue requested and seldom look for the root cause and consider the bigger picture. So long as you (The business owner / employee) are up a creek without a paddle, these so called independent IT consultants will feed off your situation at your expense.
Hourly IT Consultants typically take their sweet time to fix your computer or network problems, and then proceed to bill you for it. What most small business owners don’t realize is that though they feel they are getting as good deal, by hiring an independent IT consultant at $50 per hour or less, the reality is they are costing your business more than what they are saving you in hourly billable’s.
Example:
Business owner Joe calls an independent IT consultant to switch from IP information on their router/firewall from ISP#1 to ISP#2. Assuming Joe is operating his business using Microsoft Small Business Server. It’s safe to assume that most independent IT consultants lack foresight and planning because they are only answerable to themselves. So Joe brings in an independent IT consultant who happily changes the IP’s and tests to make sure all users can access the Internet from their workstations, laptops and even the small business server. Time taken 30 minutes at most. The result is that a few hours to a few days latter users complain that they can send emails, but can not receive any emails.
Joe calls his $50 per hour consultant and informs him of the situation. The consultant proceeds to return to Joe’s office at his earliest convenience and not Joe’s. In the mean time Joe’s clients are getting bounce backs and becoming frustrated at their inability to business with Joe. The independent IT Technician finally shows up, spend 30minutes or so troubleshooting why Exchange on Small Business Server can send, but not receive emails. He then resorts to checking firewall rules to make sure that the SMTP ports are open, accepting traffic from the Internet (WAN) and forwarding to the internal private IP address of the Small Business Server that is hosting Exchange Mailboxes.
After spending about an hour or so scratching his head, if he is knowledge enough, he will realize that he his missed a step in the entire process. The step being to change the MX (Mail eXchange) record for Joe’s domain to point all traffic to the new IP. Worst case is that he has no idea what an MX record is, which equates to Joe having to hire a more knowledgeable IT professional or a company to troubleshoot and fix the problem at the real and fair market price, which is closer to $100 per hour on the low side.
Total cost of hiring the independent IT Consultant:
Day 1 = $ 50 x ½hr = $ 25.00
Day 2 = $ 50 x 1hr = $ 50.00
Day 3 = $100 x 1hr = $100.00
Total Expenditure = $175.00
Joe could have simply hired the right company for $100 per hour and had the job completed within 30-45 minutes for less than a $100.
But the true cost is not quantified because, Joe’s company reputation and loss of opportunity are priceless.
The independent consultant exists to fix what he knows and charge your for learning what he does not know, because you are being billed for his time for something he has no clue about. As a rule of thumb, you should put a value on how much the problem will cost you if not correctly diagnose and fixed in a timely manner and then decide if it’s worth spending the extra money to solve the problem.
In-House Person or Help Desk
Most companies that can afford the cost of running a helpdesk, typically do so with little oversight , review and analysis of it’s performance as it relates to customer satisfaction. Our clients that operate their own helpdesk, do so in a haphazard manor. And in some case without the ability to create, track and monitor a service ticket because they simply have not planned their helpdesk infrastructure.
Most end users when questioned about their companies internal helpdesk support, respond with comments of dissatisfaction, delays and lack of knowledge to solve their problems in a timely manner.Typically the end user is concerned with issues related to the timeliness of a resolution to their computer problem or otrher IT problems they may be facing. Another common concern amongst end users is one of personality clashes, where they have had a bad experience with a member of their internal IT department and are hesitant and lack confidence in their ability to be supported without the attitude of the helpdesk. And lastly excuses as to why it can’t be resolved and then a pawning of to another member of the helpdesk. The total experience in most users word is narrowed down to one sentence “Total waste of time”.
Most companies that have their own helpdesk fail to realize the business impact of a small number of helpdesk technicians impact on the large number of end users they support. Most helpdesk technicians are limited in knowledge to what they personally know and have little in the way of a support network that they can learn from and call upon. With this in mind the end users computer problems are resolved in a less than timely manner. The concept of an internal helpdesk is great in theory, but in reality it’s advantages are far fewer then it’s disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is the fact that a company relies on its technology resolution needs on the knowledge and availability of a hand full of users and their limited skills.
IT Outsourcing Company
IT Outsourcing Companies exist to provide the level of service and support desired by most small and mid-sized businesses. Outsource IT companies offer greater flexibility along with a larger pool of knowledge. Most SMB that desire the flexibility of an internal helpdesk with a lower cost of support choose to go this route because it enables the SMB to focus on its core competencies rather than trying to run and compete with an Outsource helpdesk solution. The greatest advantage of helpdesk outsourcing is simply knowledge and experience.
An outsource helpdesk service company is more likely to have expereinced computer and networking problems amongst it’s other clients and would have a large knowledge base of technical data to aid resolution of most IT support issues that are reported. Giving it’s clients a better response time to resolving any IT problems that crop up. In addition to this an IT outsourcing company has more man-power available to handle the volume and far greater combined number of years of experience than that of an internal helpdesk team or that of an independent IT consultant.